Topic: Capitalism vs. Socialism - Make your argument here. - page 14. (Read 21323 times)

So now with your arguments totally decimated, you resort to literally speaking for me? This is a really extremely low level of "debate" bordering on the level of some cheap mentalist act. Maybe you should move to Vegas and get a spandex sequin suit. Oh really you disdain semantics? Is that why you constantly just redefine anything you don't agree with or that conflicts with your existing bias? Really, tell us all again what you do for a living please. I want it to be clear where this stunning level of debate comes from.

The world is not just a word salad like you have flopping around in your cantaloupe. Not everything is subjective. Lots of things are objective, and your ideology totally ignores the objective to very destructive effect.

How can you say it's only mechanism by which people own their own shit?  It's quite the opposite; Socialism means everybody owns my shit as much as I do, so in reality I wouldn't own shit!  But reality is obviously not your strong suit, is it?  What you profess to be "Socialism" is nothing but a fantasy.

Reality: I live and work in a capitalist society.  I have an employer and I have my own business.  My employer owns a shitton of machinery, and I own a little bit of my own.  I own my house.  I own my car, my mt bikes, and my guns.  You don't get to lay claim to any of my shit any more than my employer does.

Does that confuse you?

Well we agree because we already established that you call workers owning the means of production (EVERYONE working their OWN fields with their OWN animals) capitalism and you call authoritarianism (people having little freedom over their labor or fruits of the labor) socialism.  Since I have so much disdain for nonstop semantics, i'm just going to start adopting your definitions in discussion with you and add a (TS) indicator for external readers.

By these tecshare definitions, we need to move to capitalism(TS) and away from socialism(TS).  

How exactly do you suggest we transition from the socialist(TS) authoritarian economy  we have today to something more capitalist(TS) the OP describes?

Totally agree, we are not supposed to be all landlords, there must be people who do the lower tasks, those who exploit people are those who we should be against.

You just love running around and redefining everything you like to Socialism don't you? Apparently to you everything is Socialism, except real Socialism. Socialism IS NOT the only method, and that statement is completely fallacious. Capitalists depend on workers. Workers depend on workers. We all depend on workers. WTF is your point? I see, so sweat is more valuable than financing is it?

The irony is you are describing workers owning the means of production....socialism.  Capitalism involves many people working one man's land.  Socialism is the only mechanism by which everyone could obtain their own land/animals to work.   Capitalists depend on the work of their workers.  Most shareholders are not putting any sweat into what is being produced.   

I think capitalism is the best way to help people, everyone should depend on their own work, their own sweat, if God wanted us to have communism as a model he would've established this in the initial laws he gave to Moses, (everyone was entitled to work their own fields, raise their own animals and so on) first laws of humankind.

All that pure capitalism does when it is not part of a big, formal government, is to make every, little family into capitalistic socialism.

Well your post is like saying a bridge cannot exist without the land on the side it originates from(duh).   Thats because communism is the future system created in response to capitalism and socialism represents the transition from capitalism to communism.

Its not a matter of capitalism or communism.  Its capitalism then communism.  That is just the next step in the evolution of human society. As we continue to become more and more sophisticated, we drop our old systems and adopt newer, more efficient ones.  

do we have to argue between socialism and capitalism? as if their the only options there are, and noone can pick a third option or a more complicated option. socialism and capitalism are the same thing, two sides which are really working for the some thing, are cooperating; they are two thought germs which have reached equilibrium, have sucked people into the game thinking one side or the other is necessary because the other side is EVIL//!
 so we have to fight for a side to prevent the evil from materializing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

this debate is a distraction to prevent people from talking about real issues.

Im pretty sure socialism can't exist without the financing and support of capitalism, socialism without capitalism is communism...

All these systems today are antiquated and there needs to be new ideas of political systems developed.. we can't just keep trying to bandage these failing systems..

This is absurd.  Most of human history did not have a state, money, or classes and involved the sharing of resources.  Primitive communism.



Well by definition, socialism puts power into the hands of workers and communities.  Socialism is decentralized power to individuals by definition. Democracy and individual control are literally the mechanisms by which socialism functions.  Its not mob rule either because individuals keep control over their workplace and communities keep control over themselves. 

Of course, when all of your examples of socialism are actually things that are the opposite of socialism, you will come to a conclusion that socialism doesn't work. 

You are saying "putting power into the hands of each individual never works because the state having all of the power leads to abuse of power" .  Its akin to saying "watering plants never works because eventually, the plants will dry out". 

Makes no sense.

Though I like the ideology behind socialism there is a very major flaw in the whole system and that is it breeds dictatorship Because everything is in the hands of the government, it give them power over everything and from the power, it breeds dictatorship.

I can say that the so-called communism/socialism is false proposition.

Socialism/communism has never really existed in the history of mankind，it exists only in Marx's theory. All self-proclaimed socialism/communism countries that you know are not true communism.To be exact, they are all "totalitarianism/authoritarianism" out the cloak of communism.

The core of real communism is that power comes from the people and people share power.

But now all the "socialist/communist-ruled" countries power are concentrated in the hands of a few high-ranking party members in communist party, and they have supreme power.

In my opinion, communism is an idealized social state. I don't think that true communism is bad,but Marx theory has a major flaw，he envisions a highly civilized society, but neglected the restriction of power.

It does not provide a feasible theoretical basis for how to limit power after power is out of control. He does not see that the concentration of power will inevitably lead to the loss of control.

In any society, once power is too concentrated, it will inevitably lead to the abuse of power. All communist countries are like this without exception.

Therefore, at present, Marx’s theory has proved to be a failure.

But is it possible to succeed？ Maybe, when the human society develops into a highly civilized era, the day when a man with God-like power can consciously not abuse power.

If it happens, then it is a era of God, not human.

Entitled to eh? What is anyone really entitled to? If your answer is the fruits of your own labor, then at what point does some one else get to tell you, you have had enough and now they are taking it for others at the point of a gun?

In the USA at least, the government currently doesn't produce the money (though they have the power to under the constitution), the private bank known as The Federal Reserve Bank does. Also, as they print more and more money, inflation is itself a form of taxation. More money is printed, the cost of real goods and services go up, the value of the currency drops in buying power. Then as wages go up to keep up with cost of living, you are "earning more" so the IRS taxes you again for the inflation.

Any time you are feeding money into a bureaucracy, it is going to siphon off some for its own operations. Over time this pool grows and grows and corruption runs rampant. It is inevitable, good intentions be damned.

I am against SOME forms of taxes. I don't agree with income tax policy, and property taxes can be used in a very parasitic way to strip people of land while the larger companies end up writing off their property taxes anyway.
Everything can be paid for with sales taxes. It is very simple. You consume more, you pay more. There is no easy way around it either.

Again you are creating a false dichotomy trying to claim if I don't support your idea of taxes I must be an anarchist. Really this is bottom of the barrel standards of personal attacks and false choice fallacies. What else you got?

Its simply taking the money they were "entitled to" for unemployment and using that to build a business.  Are you opposed to unemployment benefits?

The government produces one very important thing. Money.  If the government stops producing money you get rapid deflation, a very bad thing for the economy.  Remember that.  New spending does not equal new taxes.  Anyone keeping up with the US right now should realize that.

Are you against taxes?  Taxes are a government issue regardless of which economic system you are using.  Do you wish there were no taxes?   You can't have a government, or national currency.   That would make you an anarchist.

It seems like you are really just an anarchist.

They can like chocolate cake too, it doesn't make chocolate cake Socialist. There you go again with the nebulous Communist buzzwords that are almost completely meaningless at this point.

Exactly, you are totally unaware of the results of these policies. Let me spell it out for you.

With your belly full of warmth and a smile on your face you write up some subsidies that are going to "put the means of production back in the worker's hands" whatever the fuck that means in reality. This subsidy then has to be provided by the government. The government does not produce anything, so it needs to pay for this subsidy with taxes of one form or another. If you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will come and MAKE you pay your taxes and possibly also put you in a cage.

All Socialists promote taking money from the productive at the point of a gun, otherwise it would just be called charity.



We may share a lot of views, I don't know that for sure. However this is not about semantics. This is about causality, and how this particular ideology, usually even motivated by good intent, has a step by step path laid out for it to turn into a totalitarian dystopian society. Communism was LITERALLY FUNDED BY the Western banking elite in the US and Europe. The ideology is the fruit of a poison tree. Your analogy above is again simplistic and ill-defined.

Human beings are in fact VERY PREDICTABLE, and if you leave them any room to take more power and control, they will. Socialism is like locking a bunch of children in a toy store over night and trusting they will not touch any of the toys. In this analogy the bureaucrats are the children and the toys are our lives and means of survival. Socialism and Communism not only ignore basic human drives and behavior, they ignore the laws of economics, largely based on math. From practically any academic angle you approach Communism from, Communism/Socialism/Marxism fail examination. This is not simply a semantic disagreement between us, but perhaps maybe with yourself.

Socialists like these laws because they put the means of production into the hands of the worker who would otherwise have to sell his labor for the rate dictated by some capitalist, or live off of the government unemployment benefit indefinitely.

I don't know anything about money being taken at the point of a gun and no one in the american socialist party would condone such so we are all on the same page here.

Nope, to me socialism is simply workers and communities having freedom and control over their own labor and production.

. You still are me.  We have the same views on just about everything here.  The main thing we disagree on the semantics of the word socialism.  You have switched the words capitalism and socialism and think that I (and all dictionaries as well as the American socialist party) are the ones who have switched them.  I understand that you are basing your definition of socialism on the behaviors of governments that have operated under the name "socialist" or "communist" party and that is probably a position shared by people who lived in the former soviet union.  I will concede this because it is not worth arguing over what word to use to classify an economic system by when we all agree on basic principles that are is bad and good.

Lets just call them System 1 and System 2.


System 1: People are oppressed by a power hierarchy.  The fruits of labor are stolen by force or contract.  People do not have the liberty to do what they want with their own lives. In the end, needs are not even met.

System 2: People live in freedom and have control over their own lives.  People are entitled to the fruits of their labor and have the opportunity to be innovative entrepreneurs.  Morale is high.


Why quibble over silly semantics when we could discuss actual differences with respect to the correct means to the same end?  We all (correct me if I'm wrong) hate system 1 and want system 2.  That means it is not productive to continue to talk about how system 1 has failed in the past.  We agree on the end but perhaps we differ on the means to that end.  Why not talk about that instead of arguing about which word to use to describe things we agree on.   

Well maybe to you they aren't socialist, but the problem is that these are types of programs that can achieve the goal of the socialist party and every socialist I know of in this country today.  So regardless of whether or not you call them socialist, or the historic socialists you read about would have taken that route, the socialists here and now should be the only ones relevant to the discussion. 

Also, you have misread them as they are not "centralized command economy structure".  Individuals use them to start their own businesses which succeed or fail based on the market.  Centralized command economy means that the government is telling people to produce x amount of a good or service.  It just seems like you have all of the economic vocabulary twisted, haven't' read up on the laws, or both.
No economic system produces anything.  Everything is produced by labor regardless of the system.  The system simply determines who gets the surplus.  Socialists suggest that the worker who did the labor should get the surplus. 



We don't expect different results though. We expect the same positive results that democracy and worker-owned businesses have always produced.  Worker-ownership doesn't guarantee success, but it simply puts people's lives into their own hands.  All people are happier when they have freedom and control in their lives.  Relative to their capitalist counterparts, worker cooperatives like Mondragon have proven to be crisis resilient and have increased the quality of life and happiness of everyone involved.  We would be delighted to get the same results. 

Somehow what you call capitalism and definitely no socialism is a core principle of the socialist party.  Maybe you should read the website before strawmanning what socilaists want based on what you read about the USSR.
https://www.socialistpartyusa.net/principles-points-of-agreement