...therefore, if roads didn't exist, we came up with socialism, then implemented roads, roads would be socialist. Whereas if roads existed beforehand then they wouldn't be socialist. Both final states of the system are identical and there is a contradiction.

Reductio ad absurdum.

Psychoak, the syllogism has been the simplest, most easily defined logical argument for over 2,000 years, and the syllogism I spelled out is perfectly valid. While, sadly, it does not surprise me to hear you bluntly declare this basic argument, the basis of all logical training 'crap', it does at least confirm for me what I have long suspected - you have literally no understanding of logic or deductive reasoning. Or you're a troll.

Either way the fact is that, with the inability to apply basic logic, you are at best a somehat brighter than average primate that has, one hopes, learned not to foul the carpet (Though your tendency to fling your own shit casts doubt) - you cannot, by definition, have a reasoned opinion.

Jonnan

Ive been notified that there was an attempt to hijack this thread involving onnan and psycloak
therefore if ill keep seeing off topic posts in this thread ill just ask the admins to lock it or something.
Dont worry though as ill make another threat. now we lost many voices in this thread
mainly due to the fact that they were prooven wrong or followed by ideas ignoring facts
hopefully some more educated people will join us, or even better people with private experiance
in both sistems (i.e someone who own a business with workers, or someome related to socialism) 

im not sure about others but i find this thread very intersting and i check it few times a day
and one tip to everyone in here, throwing empty words will not help you change others mind
if you think you are right, just post a link to back up whatever it is you saying.

with a lot of brainwashing i think i could be very happy in both types of society. 

its not quite borg but i was born to early for the relly cool stuff

I'm not familiar with "Das Kapital" - but it seems to me you have asserted that somehow being an abstraction creates some sort of "corrosion."

So I now await the proof that all abstractions are corrosive.

CocaColaAddict: I do believe I answered you sufficiently. Costs are not always money - they can be time and energy and labor and other things as well.

Meaning no disrespect - While I will cop to the fact that I've never gotten the knack for simply ignoring Psychoak when he blathers, I have in fact limited myself to correcting him on factual mis-statements - such as the definition of what infrastructure is, and in turn whether government control of Infrastructure is Socialism.

If any discussion of this type is to have *any* use, it is vital that recognition of commonly defined terms be enforced, or at least any disagreement on what valid definitions are be conducted openly rather than hidden beneath vague equivocation, which unfortunately I have found the gentleman all too willing to attempt. Such deliberate attempts to keep linguistic smoke and mirrors going dooms any possibility of genuine dialogue.

If my reaction to that is seemed to be hijacking (and my personal dislike for him makes that a legitiamte complaint), then I apologize for that. But, my intent, however badly managed, was to ensure that we're all using the same definitions.

With apologies as appropriate to the thread at large.

Jonnan

Thank you for undarstanding
if there any problem with him or you on undartanding each other, just play smart
as i said many times, back up your facts, the more you back them up the more waight your words have
in this discussion, but fighting by throwing words without a backup is really not the way.

Im not quiet following the depate you guys have but it seems that it have something to do with Infrastructure?
Infrastructure 

"nfrastructure can be defined as the basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function."
"The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, power grids, telecommunications, and so forth. Viewed functionally, infrastructure facilitates the production of goods and services; for example, roads enable the transport of raw materials to a factory, and also for the distribution of finished products to markets. " 

Public works and public services: "The term public works includes government owned and operated infrastructure as
well as public buildings such as schools and court houses"

Natural monopoly

• The systems tend to be natural monopolies, insofar that economies of scale means that multiple agencies providing a service are less efficient than would be the case if a single agency provided the service.
• The assets have a high initial cost and a value that is difficult to determine.
• Once most of the system is built, the marginal cost of servicing additional clients or users tends to be relatively inexpensive, and may be negligeable if there is no need to increase the peak capacity or the geographical extent of the network.

CocacocaAddict, I believe this thread is coming unstuck, as there is no decisive definition of Socialism. It seems to mean different things to different people.

It can either be:

1) Workers own the means of production or the state owns them?

2) Money is abolished?

3) Degree of private property. (Is it fully abolished or can u own certain things.)

4) Centralised planning in the society? Decentralised planning?

5) Full equality of outcome or just partial?

6) Anarchists or state?

7) Democratic rules?

8) Social Democracy?

9) Competing products?

10) Limited market exchange?

11) Existence of Labour markets?

12) Anything I forgot?

It would help if someone would clarify, as it gets annoying when the definition keeps changing throughout the thread. When people use the term socialism it has always seemed very vague to me as it can mean numerous things.

When does a country stop being capitalist and becomes socialist?

Bastiat, that's a great set of questions for this very messy thread. I took an interest originally because I come down on the democratic side of things. I believe markets are fundamentally secondary to popular sovereignty and would prefer to live with majorities who appreciate the weaknesses of both 'free' market systems and elite attempts at centralizing control of industrial and agricultural production.

But it appears to me that both the OP and his/her leading antagonists are more interested in winning rhetorical points than they are in having an honest cross-opinion discussion. At the very least, the thread should have two fairly concise working definitions (one from each 'side') for both socialism and capitalism. Instead we mostly have what amounts to flag-waving and name-calling, neither of which has more than entertainment value.

As someone who could sort of follow Marx and Engels but found the little Hegel I tried mostly too hard to read, I still think the most serious 'intellectual weakness' on 'both sides' of this thread is underapprecation or ignorance of dialectical analysis. Thesis+Antithesis-->Synthesis, where Thesis=Preceding_Synthesis. The English words "capitalism" and "socialism" are shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. They indicate the presence of real social techniques that are dynamically engaged in creating a successor technique, but we're just stupid humans and IMO we'd gain far more from confronting our ignorance about the situation than we have so far by frenetic posturing in hopes of supporting a false sense of certainty.

Ouch my eyes... K lets put it straight:

Socialism: "socialism—defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production"

"It is often thought that the idea of socialism derives from the work of Karl Marx. In fact, Marx wrote only a few pages about socialism, as either a moral or a practical blueprint for society. The true architect of a socialist order was Lenin, who first faced the practical difficulties of organizing an economic system without the driving incentives of profit seeking or the self-generating constraints of competition"

"The system that evolved under Stalin and his successors took the form of a pyramid of command. At its apex was Gosplan, the highest state planning agency, which established such general directives for the economy as the target rate of growth and the allocation of effort between military and civilian outputs, between heavy and light industry, and among various regions. Gosplan transmitted the general directives to successive ministries of industrial and regional planning, whose technical advisers broke down the overall national plan into directives assigned to particular factories, industrial power centers, collective farms, and so on." 

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"System of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control; also, the political movements aimed at putting that system into practice.

Because “social control” may be interpreted in widely diverging ways, socialism ranges from statist to libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. The term was first used to describe the doctrines of Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Robert Owen, who emphasized noncoercive communities of people working noncompetitively for the spiritual and physical well-being of all (see utopian socialism). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, seeing socialism as a transition state between capitalism and communism, appropriated what they found useful in socialist movements to develop their “scientific socialism.” In the 20th century, the Soviet Union was the principal model of strictly centralized socialism, while Sweden and Denmark were well-known for their noncommunist socialism."

"social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members."

"his conviction puts socialism in opposition to capitalism, which is based on private ownership of the means of production and allows individual choices in a free marketto determine how goods and services are distributed. Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor. As a result, terms such as individual freedom and equality of opportunity may be meaningful for capitalists but can only ring hollow for working people, who must do the capitalists’ bidding if they are to survive. As socialists see it, true freedom and true equality require social control of the resources that provide the basis for prosperity in any society."

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551569/socialism

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To make things clear once and for all, if you think you are right and someone say something not logical
or false claims, you can simple use the ultimate weapon to crash those false claims by using www.google.com
that is ofcourse if his claims are wrong.
If there is something not clear just google it, many people avoiding the search for information
and following thair own ideas, as for me, i both gathering information online
and have 2 parents who lived under USSR and told me many things about it from simple peopls prospective
during my entire life, i was also born under USSR even though when it crashed i was only 8 and i dont
remember much of it, yet i was a happy kid, i had toys, we had cable television and VCR and i recived
a free education and health care, so my limited memorys are all positive. 

Well actualy as for me, im doing here 2 things:
1. im trying to educate people about that socialism is not a bad word, and that communist is not an insult
using information im gathering online + personal prespactive as i was born under USSR and both my parents
are still socialists/communists even today.

2. i am trying to change peoples views, i am activist myself and i am trying to "convert"  those who
dont follow my ideas, but just remember that my ideas are based on facts, and im "converting" mainly
by opening peoples eyes to the truth, as many of them see socialism/communism as something evil
like some sort of dictatorship, with really wrong views on USSR.

I also want to add the ammount of ignorance i found here, where many americans
just dont even know the fact that there are starving children even in USA today
and that since USA adopted the capitalist way of life, the worlds overall rating droped dramaticly
and today we have 48% of world population living on less then 2$ 

BS propaganda, just like this whole thread.

This is what i've been trying to prove all along and between deviations of context by plenty of other participants in this thread.

If state has responsabilities towards population from democratic means, the economic system they adhere to can tilt balance at the expense of industrialized work dynamics WHEN profits dictates how their free-market operates.

Further more, the capitalists complain that socialism use these very same profits to enhance state interests WHEN the still industrialized factors provide sufficient work to many or all -- except that investors' gains (THAT's the extrememly important distinction) through global markets pull out a fair chunk of money out of population hands for, incidently, political reasons.

Thus, standards of living differs by social classes rather than effectiveness of the workforce or productivity ratios.

Objectivity is proof. Multiple GNPs aside, the banking snoop by highest possible interests (composite risk, i must insist) is again distributing money to the wrong people. Property is *then* overvalued from its real cost and spent by consumers.

Pick your favorite solvability goals, i paid stamps 5 cents once - and now they're 65+taxeS. Will they stop to match reasonable revenues, urban or rural?

I got sucked dry by cars refueling to work and then, rent a nearby enough place to limit or budget expenses. The only value you can put on people is in the HOW they can cope with such abuses in society. Socialism or Capitalism, included.

So the welfare state is back in style, thanks to the pulpit for nobodies known as the Internet, hm? Interesting.

Through the Looking Glass; Chapter VI

I'm going to repeat an objection I had to the premise at the beginning of the thread, in that, properly speaking, socialism is a gradiant between communism and capitalism -  to wit

Wikipedia: Communism

Capitalism:

Socialism:

While these terms are obviously not defined as such, none of them seem to contradict the common undersanding that whil communism and capitalism are definitive endpoints of public/private ownership of property and means of production, socialism is a sliding scale between the two - if there is public/collective ownership then you are, by definition, not working in a purely capitalistic society, nor are you in a purely communistic society if you have any private ownership at all.

The reason I harp upon this is not to be pedantic, but because this is not in line with the common use of the terms in which various forms of socialism in largely capitalistic economies are ignores and you call it capitalism, or various forms of capitalistic forms of ownership in communist countries are ignored and it is still called communism - rather like confusing light grey with whit or dark grey with black - it may be practical, but when actually debating the merits of different shades, confusing light grey with white makes the conversation ripe for attempts to redefine words to mean whatever the poster wants them to mean.

For that common usage of Capitalism actually means "Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are privately owned . . . except of course for the obvious stuff that everyone knows the government should do!", and by that definition, it does indeed turn out there are no socialists. There's a lot of stupid people that don't know what the poster claims everyone should know, but you can't see a socialist anywhere in that grey fog, just perfectly sensible capitalists and pinko communists.

Whereas if we agree that we're dealing with two extremes and a gradual gradation between them, there is actually a chance of arguing particular questions on where one is better than the other. - I don't think there are any hardcore communists any more, and laisez-faire capitalists are nearly as endangered outside the protected reserves on Wall Street and far right. Outside those extremes we're all socialists, and I think it's reasonable to argue about what exactly the govenrnment *should* be doing for us as a group.

Jonnan

I wouldn't call socialism or communism insults either, but I do find the assumption the capitalism = greed insulting.

You really are a dumb shit.  Why do I keep having to do grade school teaching for a guy that's obviously post college material?  Socialism isn't a category, it's a concept.  Syllogisms are only applicable where logical, hence the root of the word.

Proper logic, for any morons that can't figure this out.  All means of production are a component of socialism.  A road is a means of production, therefore a road is a component of socialism.

Improper logic, what Jonnan the chimp hater uses.  All means of production are a component of socialism.  A road is a means of production, therefore a road is socialism.

You cannot define a part as the whole.  It's not a category.  Syllogism is using a categorical quality to define that quality in a member.  Apples are a type of fruit, not the definition of fruit.  I'm good for the troll label though.  If I were anything else I'd just let you be wrong on the internet like anyone with a fucking brain would.

I confess to having read only the OP and a few posts.  Mainly because most have no understanding of politics in general or geopolitics specifically, I'm sure some were germain.

I hope you enjoy the visit to Cuba, but know this.  Cuba is not a socialist society.  It is a dictatorship much like Batista before the Castro led revolution.

Many dictatorships have used the thin veil of communism or socialism for the past 50 years.  The most prominent examples are of course the Soviet Union and China.  I can't truthfully recall a socialist regime.  Can you?  Some EU countries are so labeled but there is still a free market.   

Poland.

mmk, I think I got it all sorted out here . . .

pure socialism under the "centrally planned economy and gov't controlls all means of production" I think is infeasible.

But - very few nations today are 100% pure. I think that a mixed economy does work, and frankly seems to be working the best. There will always be arguments over where the lines should be exactly, so I guess I'm not gonna pursue this thread any longer. Nice talking to everybody, talk later about other stuff .

The problem with trying to limit myself to factual corrections with Psychoak is his determination to be factually wrong about things that have nothing to do with the case at hand. Like trying to debunk a syllogism by bringing up "You cannot define a part as the whole" - words which he obviously heard at some point and throws about when they seem vaguely related to a valid logical argument he is too unskilled to actually debunk.

Psychoak, that has nothing to do with my syllogism. "You cannot define a part as the whole" is known as the Fallacy of Composition, that the properties of a sub-domain do not necessarily apply to the domain.

The problem is that my syllogism at no point ascribed 'socialism' as a property of infrastructure - indeed the Fallacy of Composition is interesting in that a properly constructed syllogism actually excludes it from play, as you would know if you had any actual knowledge of either. So, when you accuse me of having a properly constructed syllogism that is nonetheless fails from a Composition fallacy, you are not accusing me of being stupid - you are accusing me of being smarter than every logician since Aristotle himself.

I'd love to claim you are right about something, breaks my heart to say, 'No, probably not'.

Since people are getting tired of our public spats, and I'd like this to have *something* to do with the thread, I'm going to restate the Infrastructure syllogism more formally, and see if people grant that public infrastructure = Socialism.

• All Government-Controlled-Means-of-Production are Socialism
• All Government-Controlled-Infrastructure(s) are Government-Controlled-Means-of-Production
  (Avoids the four terms fallacy - apologies, kludgy, but neccessary for theis syllogism to be properly formed)
  
• All Government-Controlled-Infrastucture(s) are Socialism.
  

Can we agree on this basic definition of what we're talking about so we can get back to actually talking about it?

Jonnan

Socialism and dictatorship aren't contradictions.  Corruption is though.  There's nothing egalitarian about the party members living the high life while the commoners starve.  If there were a benevolent dictator that somehow held power without exploiting his position for personal gain, or the gain of his supporters, they could be socialist.  I'm far too cynical to think it will ever exist, but it's at least a theoretical possibility.  Since an actual egalitarian society has never existed without a dictatorship, socialism in general isn't much more likely to exist.

Poland is close, but they've been privatizing since the 90's, and never had an egalitarian wage system.  They're one of the few true hybrids of capitalism and socialism, possessing public industry from the days of communism, while privatizing and allowing outside competition.  Most countries pretending to be socialist aren't actually socialist, but fascist.  I expect I'll take flack for that, but fascism and Nazi don't actually go hand in hand.  Socialism predicates government control of industry to promote egalitarian wages, fascism settles for taxing the living shit out of large corporations to provide a safety net from the back end.  Of course, few people want to admit they're fascist on economics, so they pretend to be socialists while having private industry and a progressively taxed pay scale that has nothing to do with Marxism.

At least one country has egalitarian pay, but fuck if I can remember which one.  It's not the kind of thing that's easy to find either.  I only know from talking to someone bitching about his egalitarian pay, and can't find it in a reasonable period of time on this irritating connection.  Being promoted to management wasn't his idea of a reward.  I don't know if they're government run though, if they are they'd be an actual socialist country depending on whether the politicians running the place played by the same rules or not.

Edit: Jonnan, I don't know how you can even read your own post.  I honestly can't imagine how anyone is unable to grasp the difference between a component, and the end product.

Perhaps it would help if you applied your "logic" to something less political?  For instance, the components of a laptop.  Circuit boards are a component of laptops.  Digital watches contain circuit boards.  Digital watches are laptops...  Although the way you keep writing it wrong, you'd be saying circuit boards are laptops, but I don't mind correcting syntax errors since I probably have more of them than you do.

You're not an existentialist are you?

Solidarity was the movement to freedom.  Mazowiecki ended many government subsidies.  Haven't researched recently, but believe well over half of the Polish economy is private.

zxy, i'm not opposed to socialism, per se.  without incentive, greed or otherwise, i haven't seen it work.

Capitalism in the U.S. needs 2 things:

1.) better and stronger regulation.

2.) raise the highest marginal tax rate to about 45% to 50%.

If we did those two things we'd solve a lot of our problems and pay off our national debt.

Universal Single Payer Health care or Universal Health Coverage (hybrid of private and public) is not Socialism. However, a higher and more apropriate top marginal tax rate would easily pay for it as well as make our country more competitive in the global economy.

When I say top marginal tax rate, I'm talking about the taxes on income made ONLY after the first $250,000 per year. The vast majority of Americans (95%+) will never see incomes that high in their lifetimes.

The whole "debate" in our country is about this highest marginal tax rate and nothing more. The rich people, who run this country want it as low as possible, even to the point of bankrupting us. They also happen to own or control our politicians, legal system, and our information dissemination system. That's why we are in the mess we are in.

I don't want Socialism and as a physician I like to own my own business, thank you very much.

However in order for us to succeed in the future we need to raise the highest marginal tax rate, restore economic fairness, take the burden off the middle class (families making 50,000 to 150,000 annually), and institute universal health coverage.

Further, we need to get in control of our own energy supply and restore our manufacturing base.

That's why I'm trying to get our terms straight on this - 'Pure' Socialism is a contradiction, like trying to say a color is 'pure' gray. It might be pure black, or pure white, but grey is, by definition, a mixture of the two - neither dark, medium, or light grey can exist without both white and black components, so too with socialism.

That's also there's no contradiction with European countries being both socialist and using a free market system. Well, yeah - you can have a free market and be socialist, if you don;t have *any* freemarket, you're not socialist you're communist.

Jonnan