Democracy is Socialism

"A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible" Orwell, Socialist

 

Orwell was a novelist, not a political scienctist or an economist. He wrote fiction. A totalitarian state can be a theocracy but a socialist state is not a theocracy since socialist often care little about religion. “Religion is the opiote of the masses” Marx

 

He was an example of many socialists who rejected Stalinism for how, as a dictatorship, it had no common ground with socialism. Marx would also have rejected it as anything to do with his analysis. He's more akin to Schumpeter in referring to how socialism is delivered through economic development.

 

Do tell

 

He rejected socialism as it results in dictatorship

 

An ignorant comment. An anarchist, he embraced socialism.

 

Snicker.
Did your teacher tell you that?

 

Read his work. You wouldn't make such ludicrous comment. I particularly enjoyed his views on nationalism. Very pertinent for right wing Americans!

Socialism is a vibrant political economy. Libertarian and Market Socialism, for example, have nothing in common with the USSR. Those suggesting otherwise typically are just ignorant of that political economy.

 

Marx believed democracy was a pathway to socialism, but socialism wasn’t democracy. Furthermore, socialism was also the absents of private property, therefore there could be no market economy or economic development in a socialist state. Which of course, as history has shown repeatedly, leads to totalarian states.

 

You're giving the fluff, but ignoring the detail. Without the historical economic development that Marx referred to, the USSR is irrelevant to his analysis.

 

I’m quoting the man.

 

So you want to be accused of misrepresenting now? Each to their own. That historical development is key is obvious. That's why Marx is often compared to Schumpeter.

Its also wrong to suggest that market socialism can be ignored by Marxism. Burczak neatly demonstrates that with his analysis in Socialism After Hayek

 

He literally said these things, they are some of his most famous quotes

 

Again, you're not placing them in any context. You've been found out deliberately misrepresenting. You're also unable to respond to anything stated. Critique, for example, Burczak: "my aim...is developing a 'libertarian Marxist' conception of socialism, a socialism committed to forms of procedural and distributive justice that are central to the Marxian tradition and a socialism keenly aware of the factual and ethical knowledge problems emphasized by Hayek".

 

You’re quoting a 54 year old economic professor who’s got a theory to right all the flaws Hayek brought up about Marx and the actual results of nations that followed his theories? Really? I am not one to suggest that his theories sound like a wonderful upotia but the reality is that it runs counter to human behavior...as evident by the results over the decades.

 

Zero content again. For someone that crows about a lack of economic knowledge by others, you do seem to struggle to actually refer to any economics.

Counter to human behaviour? Nope. Indeed, its the very nature of human behaviour that explains why worker ownership generates higher productivity levels. We are a cooperative species and, free of inefficient hierarchy required for divide and conquer, democracy within the workplace delivers.

 

Orwell also took up arms and fought against fascism in Spain and was wounded, what have you done for your right wing views?

 

Absolutely false. Socialism, any form of socialism, ignored the basic human instinct of greed. A fatal flaw that unequivocally results in its failure and it’s inevitable devolution into fascism.

Whereas Capitalism harnesses greed and makes it work on behalf of the producers and as such everyone else. Capitalism is beautiful because it Isn’t a fabricated system. It is simply the observation of a free and fair market. Socialism is a disease.

 

Complete nonsense. Market socialism, for example, continues incentives associated with market forces. The invisible hand no less!

Anti-socialists have desperately naive views over how humans behave. Its like they haven't bothered to read Adam Smith (who notes the folly of hyper-rationality and how we are motivated by both self-interest and altruism)

Yep. A mass extinction event and climate crisis. Beautiful!

 

Again your argument is ludicrous. Market socialism is predicated in the idea that that the employees will WILLFULLY choose to benefit their company at the expense of themselves which COMPLETELY ignores the human imperative for greed and jealousy.

It assumes that the employees will choose to spend profits on reinvestment to the company as opposed to redistributing those funds to themselves. While this will work for a short time, as Yugoslavia found out, once the people start to disagree with the way those profits are spent (as NO large groups agree completely on those types of decisions) the populous will refuse to comply with the most logical and efficient means of distribution for better management and investment back into the business.

Moreover, as Belarus is finding out, it ignores the ugly monster of jealousy. Those workers making the bare minimum in their corporation are not going to want to give fair market value to those who bring more value to their company. The cashier (for instance) is going to lowball the higher ups on their salary. The cashier will be jealous that they’re making the minimum at their company while the chief operating officer makes the maximum. Eventually they’ll low ball the higher ups so much that the quality of pay of the actual producers in company who have skills which are difficult to replace will be undermined to where they will simply choose to go to a company that will pay their fair market value.

Actions which inevitably result in the degradation of upper level producers, which decreases value and profit for the company.

 

Loller so in your view of how the economy should operate, what happens when the workers CHOOSE to not waste the profits of their company on fighting climate change?

What if in fact those workers vote for their company to ignore any consequences that their business has on the climate such as indiscriminate dumping of toxic materials?

Will their socialist government masters step in and tell them they don’t have a choice? How well do you think that’s going to go over with your socialist democracy?

Because if you think telling them they’re smart enough to determine the future of their own company and then tell them they’re too stupid because they don’t concern themselves with climate change as much as you feel they should...and then forcing them to do it anyway is going to go over well...

Then you know nothing about human nature.

 

Actually we already know that worker ownership leads to higher levels of productivity. See, for example, the research by Logue and Yates.

There is no evidence that worker ownership or co-operatives lead to reduced life of the enterprise. Indeed, we'd actually expect reduced risk of death through managerial error. Democracy within the workplace gets around the distributed knowledge problems highlighted by Hayek.

These issues are relevant in any company. For example, organisational slack analysis is used by behaviouralists to try to show how a successful manager will not attempt to cost minimise. By allowing these expenditures they can control conflict between different coalitions. We'd actually expect fewer issues with worker ownership. For example, managerial theories of the firm highlight principal-agent problems where economic inefficiency is deliberately followed. We don't have that with worker ownership. Profits create direct incentives.

 

You ignore a key aspect of negative externalities: asymmetric information. Such issues are irrelevant in worker ownership. There is diffusion of information. And of course folk realise that, if they're adding to the pollution crisis, they will be affected. It goes back to Adam Smith and how we are not dominated by egoistic preferences (unlike actually the traditional corporation)

Unlikely, but you seem to think regulation isn't maintained. Of course it is. We would merely expect better behaving companies and therefore fewer issues with rent-seeking.

Irrelevant questions. Regulatory frameworks are standard in any economic paradigm.

Have a look at the median voter and see the level of climate protection that they support. That will give you a tad of a clue!

 

No actually you won’t. That’s absolutely ludicrous. I challenge you to show me in ANY real-world example where productivity, efficiency and profit were maximized while pay for upper level management was minimized. Because it sure as hell isnt the market socialist economies of Yugoslavia or Belarus.

 

Your position is completely delusional. Completely and utterly delusional. To assert that the majority of the population is going to WILLFULLY choose to redistribute funds to combat a nebulous problem such as climate change, when no real world solution to combat it has been found, as opposed to taking those profits and redistributing it to themselves in an effort to increase their quality of life is nothing short of delusional lunacy.

Furthermore, the fact you don’t see the irony in having a market socialist economy, which is predicated on allowing the worker to determine what is best for their company and themselves, and then instituting regulations on those companies and employees because they’re not operating their company the way the leftist elite think they should is hilariously preposterous.