Socialism is dead

[I Shrugged]

http://www.garynorth.com/public/14560.cfm

Socialism is dead as an ideology and also as a political movement. It is an example of a god that failed.

Socialism is a very specific form of economic opinion. A socialist believes that the civil government should own the means of production. This is what socialism has always meant....

Any time you see a statement that international socialists are doing this or that, immediately discount it. Pay zero attention to it. International socialists are a figment of the imagination of domestic conservatives. They have not been around in a quarter of a century.

Obama is not a socialist. The Democrats are not socialists. I have not heard Bernie Sanders call for the nationalization of America's corporations. They are defenders of the welfare state....

[Maddy]

You can win any argument by claiming ownership of the definitions.  I doubt that too many people would go along with the idea that anything short of full state ownership of the means of production is just another brand of liberalism.

[Pointedstick]

Yes, it seems like what the author is describing is really communism, and that does seem dead. But in fact, there's already a word for expansive state power over and collusion with private sector means of production without nationalizing them: Fascism. But that word is associated more with right-wing militarism and xenophobia than left-wing economic priorities, so liberals don't like it. I think it makes sense to call this what its proponents themselves call it: liberalism. And liberalism is emphatically not dead.

[jafs]

It's important to use words correctly.

The definition of socialism is that the means of production are owned by the government, or collectively by the people.  It's a "stage" on the road from capitalism to communism, according to Marx and Marxists.

Far too many things are called "socialist" incorrectly, and as a way of dismissing ideas and possibilities.

[jafs]

he is weasel wording the term own, ..as in.. they don't want to own the means of production... they just want control over every aspect of it ! (except responsibility)

in his own words

They are defenders of the welfare state. They want more taxes on the rich. They want more regulation of the economy. They want to direct the capitalist system in exactly the same way as the fascists did in the 1930's. They want to retain the private ownership of the means of production, but they want to tell the private owners what they can or cannot do with their capital. They want to direct the productivity of capitalism. They do not want state ownership of the means of production. They want to use the famous carrot and stick to direct production along certain lines, but they don't want any responsibility for having done so.

if you control all aspects of the means of production you for all intents and purposes own it

socialism and Communism aren't as dead as he claims, they have just gotten sneakier

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Words have meanings, and when you start to dilute them like that, soon people are talking about how taxation is socialist.

[MachineGhost]

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Words have meanings, and when you start to dilute them like that, soon people are talking about how taxation is socialist.

No.  Words don't have meanings; people do.  The referrant for "socialism" has evolved over the last 100 years.  What was true in opposition to "socialism" in 1916 is not the same as 2016.

[jafs]

The fact that people misuse words isn't a good thing.

It's true that words and their usage evolve over time - there are all kinds of new words now that didn't exist when I was younger (also seems like a bad thing to me).

Socialism is clearly defined as an economic system in which the means of production are owned collectively or by the government.  Calling a lot of other ideas, like taxation and spending programs that help people, socialist, is just a way to dismiss those ideas, and it's not a smart thing to do.

[Pointedstick]

Socialism is clearly defined as an economic system in which the means of production are owned collectively or by the government.

Well what's communism, then?

[barrett]

Socialism is clearly defined as an economic system in which the means of production are owned collectively or by the government.

Well what's communism, then?

Communism is when the means of production are owned by the masses. It's just never really been tried on a grand scale as far as I know.

[MachineGhost]

The fact that people misuse words isn't a good thing.

People don't misuse words; they have different referrants for words.  But if you mean that people don't use the commonly agreed upon referrant for a word at any given time period, then that's how you tell a bullshit artist from a huckster.

A nice example is in this thread.  The referrant for communism has been conflated with socialism.  That may indeed have been commonly true in 1916 but the referrant for socialism is now commonly identified as the third way.

[jafs]

Socialism is clearly defined as an economic system in which the means of production are owned collectively or by the government.

Well what's communism, then?

Communism is socialism plus the elimination of the state, money and social classes.

[Maddy]

Socialism allows the productive members of society to retain ownership and control over the means of production, then extracts and redistributes the profits if and when they materialize.  Meanwhile, it's the individual entrepreneur, or the stockholders, as the case may be, who are required to figure out how to keep the show going, and who will alone bear the loss if the enterprise fails.  From the standpoint of the government, it's a "no muss, no fuss"arrangement, bringing to mind the old adage "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?